You stop seeing colors.
And people become people.
For most people that see my pictures they see Latin kids.
Dark skin. Maybe poverty. And maybe they
even see people that are below them, in like social status or something,
because of their poverty.
When people learn that I’m working at a children’s home in a
third world country, most people might think of poverty, and I'm going to “help”
them. Or something like that.
And that’s kinda what I thought first.
When I first got here, it was all these cute Latin kids,
with their light brown skin. And super fast Spanish that I couldn’t really
understand.
But not now.
These people are my family. When you are first immersed into
a culture of people with different color skin, they tend to all look the same
or hard to tell apart. But not to me.
Not anymore.
The color doesn’t make them all look the same. The more time
that I’ve been with them, the more I see their differences, their uniqueness,
and that people are people. They are all different. They don’t blend together.
I feel apart of life here. It’s normal. I know people. I have friends and I
have family. And that is the greatest thing ever.
And while I may be just as tanned as almost half of them, my
blonde hair still makes me stick out like a sore thumb. So I’m not really sure
if my friends and family still see me as a “gringa” or if I have blended into
their lives as well.
But it’s cool to see how I am now apart of the Honduran
culture, and that I prefer it.
And that things most people find weird or crazy about this
culture, are my norm and I find joy in those things.
I don’t know. It’s weird. I guess I’m just trying to say
that Latin people are not just brown skinned people to me anymore. They are people.
They are the same to me as all the white people in the states. I'm comfortable
being the only white person in the room, or just one of hundreds of white
people. And I am able to call these people my family and say that I have
realized that they are people just like everyone else. Not just a project, or a
year of my life, they are my life. I don’t know, that might sound stupid. But
that’s what I’ve learned.
